{"id":37735,"date":"2015-11-18T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T20:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=37735"},"modified":"2015-11-18T15:09:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T20:09:00","slug":"local-student-suspended-over-wearing-rosary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/11\/local-student-suspended-over-wearing-rosary\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Student Suspended
Over Wearing Rosary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"After refusing to remove his rosary out of faith, family and a symbol of his fresh start, a Lehigh Acres student received a\u00a0two-day suspension at Gateway Charter High School.<\/p>\n

Christopher Roberts isn’t a flashy teenager, but there’s one item, a religious symbol, you’ll always see him wearing.<\/p>\n

“It’s not happening.\u00a0I’m not going to take it off,” Roberts said.<\/p>\n

His mom Shannon can better explain why he feels so close to his rosary.\u00a0She introduced him to the Catholic faith when she took him in a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n

He took his faith to school. It ended up getting him a two-day suspension.<\/p>\n

“I’m not surprised. That’s what he has in the middle of chaos in his world. So now I’m not surprised. I support him for wanting to have that right,” said Shannon.<\/p>\n

According to the school, the rosary was not the issue.\u00a0They said it was all tied to a dress code violation.<\/p>\n

Shannon approved\u00a0her son to stick up for himself.<\/p>\n

“I am proud of him. Yes, I think he could’ve been a little more diplomatic, but yes, I am proud of him,” Shannon said.<\/p>\n

She added she was given a number of reasons why the rosary couldn’t be displayed — including it being gang-related.<\/p>\n

“Do I look like a gang member to you?\u00a0Do I look like somebody who runs around with tattoos and guns and sells drugs? No,\u00a0I’m doing it strictly for my faith,” Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Gateway Charter denied making any such comments.\u00a0Gateway Charter representatives said the school follows the Lee County Public\u00a0School Code of Conduct.\u00a0The rules say jewelry that may cause injury isn’t allowed.\u00a0Rosaries aren’t specifically mentioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After refusing to remove his rosary out of faith, family and a symbol of his fresh start, a Lehigh Acres student received a\u00a0two-day suspension at Gateway Charter High School. Christopher… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}